In general, photonics applications implement various functions with regard to light including, for example, generating, emitting, transmitting, modulating, signal processing, amplifying, and/or detecting/sensing light within the visible and near-infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Various techniques have been developed for implementing photonics applications. For example, some conventional techniques involve co-fabricating optoelectronic devices with CMOS integrated circuitry to implement photonics systems. The main challenge with these techniques is that the lithography used for photonics is several generations behind the most advanced CMOS. Typically, the lithography for photonics is in the range of 130 nm to 90 nm, and therefore, CMOS circuitry formed based on these design rules provides limited speed performance, thus limiting the electrical and photonics I/O speed.
Other conventional techniques for implementing photonics applications include fabricating dedicated silicon photonics chips with no integrated CMOS. The main problem with these techniques is the lack of integrated CMOS functions and therefore, the lack of analog and digital on-chip controls. For example, a ring resonator array with a heater control loop would be difficult to implement. Another problem with this approach is that high-speed I/O data communications between silicon photonics chips and other electronics chips mounted on an application board is implemented using wire-bond connections to the application board. The scaling of data communication above 25 Gbit/s with wire bonding is extremely difficult. Moreover, when using wire bonds with optoelectronic chips having optoelectronic components such as laser diodes, there is no room to install a heat sink on the optoelectronic chips, which is critical for reliable operation of laser diodes, for example.